UCU students struggle with mice in mandatory accommodation

“One day, I got home really late from work and decided to make myself some toast. As I put the bread into the toaster, a mouse jumped out of it. From that moment on, I decided never to use the toaster again,” says the third-year UCU student Thabo.

“The paranoia it gave me for being so close to the mice and hearing them through the walls when I was trying to sleep was absolutely awful,” he adds.

“The couches were filled with holes because the mice chewed through them,” recollects Bogdan, another third-year student. Both he and Thabo chose to move off campus as soon as they were no longer obliged to live there. UCU students must live on campus for the first two years of their education. In the third year, they may move out if they wish. 

Housing at ICU comprises nine residential buildings. Each housing unit accommodates 4 to 12 students, depending on its size and the number of rooms. Every academic year, the students move into a new unit, most often in a different building. 

These buildings are not owned by Utrecht University but by a housing corporation, Lekstede Wonen, which rents them to UU. 

Landlady Tessa van der Tol, an employee of Lekstede, is the students’ first point of contact for housing matters. The ICU campus also has a housemaster, Maarten Diederix, who supports students with concerns about campus life, safety, and security. 

UCU students rent the room for 10.5 months a year, paying 470 to 784 euros per month. This amount also includes the use of sports facilities and cultural spaces. According to Kamernet, students in Utrecht pay an average of 700 euros a month for a room in the private market. Via SSH, rooms cost between 500 and 600 euros a month.

Being guaranteed housing sounds like music to the ears in a city that was 4,400 student rooms short of meeting the demand in 2024-2025, so most UCU students are grateful. “I hope we will continue living on campus, but the living conditions could improve a lot,” says student Emma.

“I’m disgusted with our living space”
Students heard by DUB say that the building best known as “The Wall”, on Elmarelaan, is the one that suffers the most from mice. Thabo considers the mice situation at The Wall to be a hazard. “You are in such close proximity to mice amongst your food, your cleaning utensils, and your eating utensils that I think this is a serious hygiene concern,” he says. 

“In the earlier years, I did not have any problems with mice ever. This year, I live in The Wall, and I have seen so many mice and so much mouse poop on the shelves, the counter, the floor, everywhere," says Barbara*, who prefers to remain anonymous. "It makes me not want to go down to the kitchen and eat, so now I eat in my bedroom, which I didn't do before. I'm just disgusted with our living space." 

However, eating in your bedroom may attract the mice there as well. Some students try to prevent that by installing door sweeps, which do not work if there is a hole elsewhere. Some students caulk holes in their bedrooms themselves because they don’t know they can ask the landlady or housemaster.

According to a spokesperson for Utrecht University, during the summer break, Lekstede Wonen inspects all units and performs maintenance work. “They check every room for holes in walls and doors, and repair them. During the rest of the year, students can request repair if they detect a hole.”

“We are responsible for all holes between the inside of the unit and the outside. However, that is also where our responsibility stops,” states housemaster Diederix, stressing that mice abandon homes that are kept clean. 

UCU Director Sjoerd Bosgra acknowledges that living with mice is annoying and impacts one’s life, but underscores students’ role in preventative measures: “Mice are attracted to food. To get rid of them, two things need to happen: all food items must be stored in sealable containers, and the unit must be kept spotless. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.”

Two hours cooking and five hours cleaning
Some students counterargue that strict cleaning schedules do not suffice to drive the mice away. Student Aiata says: “We spend two hours cooking and then five hours cleaning. It’s not sustainable at all.” 

Lila has a similar experience: “Everything we planned in the kitchen was with the thought of dealing with the mice. It's not a passive factor that only comes up sometimes. It's something you're very much dealing with all the time.”

To complicate matters further, students complain about a lack of storage space for food, which makes it harder to keep food out of sight. “The kitchen was just way too small for eleven of us,” says Bogdan. “Last year, we were twelve people in the unit, and we only had one fridge with six shelves and a cupboard that the mice could easily reach,” says Anna*, who prefers to remain anonymous.

Swept under the rug
Campus Affairs Representatives (CAR) is a supportive student body at UCU that serves as a bridge between the student body and the UCU administration on campus-related matters. CAR has implemented initiatives to address the mouse issue, such as providing storage boxes and both kill and non-kill mouse traps. 

“However, we don't hold any authority, so we can't do anything else. We cannot call an extermination company, as we don't have the budget for that,” explains Sara Falcony Palacio, the CAR member focusing on housing.

A spokesperson for the university says that if an exterminator is necessary, UCU and Lekstede will call them in and pay for the service. UCU director Bosgra also states that such companies are hired “regularly” to deal with specific units. However, Sara notes that, when visiting Lekstede’s website, “one of the first things they say about pests is that they do not deal with mice specifically.” DUB reached the Lekstede landlady at UCU, but she said she couldn’t comment on the issue at this time. 

“Students are frustrated about having mice, of course, but I think the bigger frustration is that they don't feel like the problem is acknowledged. And that’s where the more emotional side of the issue comes out,” Sara, from CAR, argues.

“In the end, the students are tenants, they're renting, so we think that Lekstede should bear more responsibility. It would also be nice to see the university make a statement or at least acknowledge it. Otherwise, students feel as though the issue gets swept under the rug,” she concludes.

The UCU director says that both the university and the housing corporation take several measures to “make the chances of having mice in the UCU houses as small as possible.” Bosgra says that, in addition to caulking holes during the summer, repairing things on request the rest of the year and hiring an extermination company when necessary, UCU and Lekstede inform students at the beginning of the academic year about the measures they can take to prevent mice. 

Some students were concerned about being recognised as UCU is a small community. The names with * are pseudonyms. Those were used to respect their wish for anonymity. DUB’s editors know their real names.